


Scrapings

by Caz (CheeryKralie)



Category: Marble Hornets, Slender Man Mythos
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheeryKralie/pseuds/Caz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim wakes up. He can't move. He can't remember. He hears the long, deliberate scrape of metal on concrete, close to his head. (Spoilers up to Entry #65)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scrapings

Tim blinks, then immediately closes his eyes. The light is blinding.

When he cracks them open again, he realises that it’s only the watery light of sunrise, coming in through a slab-shaped hole that used to be a hospital window. Something moves in the sunbeams, but he can’t tell if it’s dust motes or static or just his vision swimming. His eyes are dry, sandy. His head is killing him.

 _What’s the window doing there?_ he wonders idly. That doesn’t belong in his room. Not in his car, or his workplace. Or in the forest… is that where he was last?

The forest. The tunnel. It falls into place, and he’s suddenly aware of the rest of the room.

Something’s moving there. Something heavy.

But he can’t move his limbs.

His forehead is clammy, his cheek on the ground is nerveless. There’s a horrible sour smell that makes his stomach lurch. And something’s scraping rhythmically against the concrete at his feet. And he can’t move.

It must have woken him up. The sound. And he feels heavy and cold, like he could have slept for years, but now that he hears it he has to wake up and do something. It’s the sound of metal scraping on rock. The sound of a weapon.

More of the previous day (week? month?) floats back to him, and he thinks that maybe it’s Jay. But he already knows that’s not true.

It’s not Jay. Jay ran. It’s not a friend. He doesn’t have any left.

It’s something more dangerous.

He tries to move his foot, but he can’t feel it. He can’t feel his own foot. Even his eyes are barely tracking, fixed on the bright spot of the window, the one that’s starting to leave afterimages burnt into his vision. He closes his eyes. But now he’s completely helpless, smelling and hearing but unable to see what’s going on. He opens them again.

He tries to move his foot. He tries, again, to move his foot.

The scraping stops.

Tim’s breath was already shallow. Now he holds it in his chest, and prays.

There’s a shuffling sound, like fabric on the concrete floor. Tim can feel it reverberating faintly against his ear, his cheek, but it takes him a moment to realise the significance.

Feeling. He has feeling in his face.

The realisation goes hand in hand with a sharp prickling of his skin, the pins and needles of retreating numbness. It hurts, but he’s had worse. And this is a good sign. This means he’ll be able to move.

Breath still held, he waits for the stabbing sensations to advance below his lips.

They do not.

The scraping begins again.

It’s rhythmic, _scrape, scrape,_ echoing off the naked walls, just out of sight but not far enough from his throat. It must be right beside Tim’s stomach. His vulnerable stomach, unarmoured, easily slashed. Would he even feel it? What if it’s already happened? What if the lightness in his head is loss of blood? What if the numbness in his body is hiding the fact that he’s being butchered, slowly, by the discordant metal _scrape, scrape_?

Paranoia. He has to get his thoughts under control. He’s been told that by a hundred doctors, but not one of them knows what he sees every time he closes his eyes. Not one of them knows what’s possible. They don’t live in a world where you can pass out in one place and wake up bloody in another, where old friends hunt you or stalk you and your unconscious self seems to return the favour. A hundred doctors don’t know shit.

The scrape. The shuffle. It’s getting closer to his face. He’s still trying to move his feet, with no way to tell whether it’s working.

It’s getting closer to his face, and he’ll be able to see it soon.

He moves his eyeballs. He can look away from the window now, even squint a little. The foul-smelling ground is mottled with tan and reddish colours, but it’s too blurry and close to get a look at. Whatever it is, it reaches to his face, and it’s horribly cold against his cheek. It doesn’t seem to have killed him, but he’s still not sure he wants to know what it is.

A bright hot flash swings into view and scrapes away before he can blink.

Tim’s kicks become more frantic; in his head he’s running a marathon, but as far as he knows his feet are as still and limp as sacks of flour. It’s too late to hope that the paralysis will pass in time for him to escape. The scraping thing is upon him, and now he can see it.

Corrugated iron.

A sheet of corrugated iron, coming down next to his face like a butcher’s knife, catching a flash of sunlight, then pulling away and out of sight, dragging with it some of the unidentified stuff that covers the floor.

A hand is holding it. The hand stops to rest for a moment, and he sees that the knuckles are scabbed, the nails short and filthy with mud.

Then hand and iron sheet are dragged again out of sight. More of the puddle goes with it.

There’s a noisy clatter and a grunt, the thud of shoes, and then a couple of scraped and dirty sneakers approach his face, avoiding the stuff on the floor. Whoever-it-is crouches next to Tim’s head with a quiet exclamation.

“Ugh.”

The voice is familiar. He knows it. _He knows it._ But at it clicks in Tim’s head, he finds himself being rolled over, onto his back.

Above him he finally sees the unsmiling face of Alex Kralie.

He manages to force his lips to form the other man’s name, but all that comes out is a soft croak. It dislodges something. And then, all of a sudden, he can’t breathe.

He’s choking. There’s something in his windpipe. He can’t catch his breath.

Alex’s eyes widen and he shoves Tim away, onto his other side, and slaps him hard on the back. Tim chokes again, and then hacks up stale vomit. His eyes sting and water. He drags in a ragged breath, coughs some more, breathes a little more freely.

“Stop trying to move,” Alex snaps.

It’s not as if Tim can do much to disobey him. But it still hurts his pride — not to mention his sense of safety — to do what _Alex Kralie_ is telling him. There's no way he's taking this apparent kindness at face value. Not after what he's seen.

What the hell is Alex doing here?

What, for that matter, are either of them doing here?

“Hey,” he mumbles, as Alex pulls roughly at his arms, moving them, sticking one hand under his cheek. “Stoppit,” he growls, as Alex manhandles his head and then his legs into — as far as he can tell, into some impression of the recovery position.

The weirdness is only compounding.

He’s still trying to work it out when the scraping begins again, behind him now, underscored by what he now recognises as Alex’s movements and breathing.

Alex kicks something into view. It’s the empty pill bottle.

“You might want that back,” he says.

With a herculean effort, Tim manages to move his head and shoulders and glare up at Alex. The guy is hunched over, still scraping away what must be Tim’s own vomit. The corrugated iron is a weird touch. But then again, maybe they don’t have cleaning supplies wherever this asshole is hiding these days.

“Who says it’s mine?” Tim’s voice still slurs a bit, but he’s forming words now and he can definitely manage a challenging tone.

Alex doesn’t bother to look at him. His eyes are on his job.

“Don’t try that again,” he says. His voice is just as flat and opaque as it always sounds on the tapes, and it makes Tim hate him even more. “It never works.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

No answer. Alex stands up, looking beyond Tim, at the far wall where the writing is scribbled. The bones of his face are surprisingly prominent. There’s dirt in his pores and uneven stubble on his chin.

It's unexpected, but after what Alex has done it doesn't exactly inspire pity. More like bitter satisfaction.

Tim tries again. “What are you doing here?”

Something lands on his face. A damp rag. He shakes his head and splutters.

“Clean yourself up,” says Alex, “I’m done here.”

And just like that, he turns and starts to leave. Their best lead is striding away and try as he might, Tim can’t stand up to chase him. Even where he’s got feeling back, he still feels weak and sick, cold and shaky.

“Wait!” he calls.

The bastard doesn’t even turn around.

“That’s all you have to say? After everything — Come back here, you piece of—”

It’s not going to work. Tim curses out loud to the entire world.

But then he remembers the GoPro strapped to his chest. Maybe he at least got some footage, something they can use. Jay for one has some experience in obsessing over footage for the sake of the tiniest little clues.

He works enough feeling back into his hands to paw at the little camera, praying that it’s still working.

There is no God. The camera is turned off.

Tim lets his head sink back onto the concrete floor, yanking the rag angrily off his cheek. What the hell was Alex playing at, anyway, with that little performance? What was he trying to gain? Tim doesn’t believe for a second that he came and cleaned up out of the goodness of his shitty little heart.

His eyes fall on the empty pill bottle, now lying on its side in tacky vomit. There’s still that unnatural numbness in his lower body, receding slowly, but not gone. _  
_

The vomit is very pungent. It’s like he threw up everything inside him. But he doesn’t remember eating anything reddish brown.

He feels raw and weak still, scraped up like the leavings on the floor.

And he can't remember what he did after they went into that tunnel. But the empty bottle suggests...

_Don’t try that again._

_It never works._

Tim shakes his head violently. If there’s one thing he refuses to do, it’s let Alex get to him. Alex and his ridiculous cryptic warnings.

They’ll find answers, with or without him. Maybe whatever the camera did catch is salvageable, maybe it can give them a new lead.

As soon as he can lift himself, he scoops up the pill bottle and the rag and staggers away, wiping his face as clean as he can. Before noon, all that’s left in the burnt-out hospital room is a dark stain baking on the concrete floor, and the faintest smell of something that's died lingering on the air.


End file.
